There’s something strangely beautiful about short filmmaker Elizabeth Lo’s concise, allegorical debut feature documentary, which starts off as a fly-on-the-fur exploration of Istanbul’s stray dog epidemic and becomes a lament about the difficulties of finding somewhere to belong in an increasingly fractured, and fractious, world.

For all the big themes rustling around in Hunted, they lack the startling ferocity that develops on Eve’s face — for her, there’s nothing theoretical about this study of predatory male behaviour.

Although Neeson has a nice rapport with young costar Jacob Perez, there’s no escaping the formulaic storyline featuring uncomplicated good guys and abundantly villainous bad guys.

What’s deeply satisfying about this knotty drama is the even-handed approach.

Care and respect is evident. Camerawork is beautiful, but in the service of the piece, not beauty itself. Sound design is enveloping, and together they convey worlds of light and water, of the humming from electricity that can travel for miles and of a range of emotions from anxiety to shame that run deeper and more vividly than it seems we can possibly understand.

A film of a bumpy, brilliant debut novel which was ground-breaking at the time, Bahrami’s propulsive piece dazzles, and quibbles are easily quelled, even over 124 minutes.

Talpe is excellent in the lead, his tightly-honed physique an increasingly transparent veneer for his troubled emotional state.

Tove has great charm, craft and a warming glow.

Examining a post-apocalypse through the eyes of a few souls left to carry on the human race, The Midnight Sky is an uneven but ultimately thoughtful and moving survival story.

Wiig is terrific, but there’s just not enough of her. It truly is a wonder to see an A-lister like Chris Pine embrace the traditional female support role of the pretty sidekick so winningly, while Gadot is as smooth as silk and never less than watchable. The team is there, but this is most definitely a sequel.

Greengrass is definitely aiming for big-screen entertainment here, and Hanks is the actor to deliver it.

The slick assurance of Bakhshi’s approach makes for an accessible, pacey melodrama but one that can also seem to trivialise the life and death matters at the core of the story.

In the end, Wild Mountain Thyme fails to make the most of its cast or fairytale story and feels slightly misbegotten.

Delgado keeps us invested in the fate of these two girls without tipping the film towards overt melodrama or sentimentality.

Education is aptly titled as a finale, as it describes the effect of the Small Axe series, but the word ‘open’ also comes to mind.

It would take a hard heart not to break at the sight of Alex Wheatle (now a much-loved children’s author in the UK), sitting frozen on the sofa as his friend’s mother prepares his first-ever Christmas meal.

It’s a slow burner which gambles that the incremental build of tension will keep the audience involved, even as the stoically inexpressive central character holds them at arm’s length. It’s a gamble that pays off

There’s a gentle, lived-in quality to the material that’s a departure for Soderbergh, whose films would rarely be called heartfelt. But by his standards, the unhurried Let Them All Talk is an unusually compassionate examination of a group of characters, across different generations, who find themselves at a crossroads.

It’s the empathy Syversen and her lead actress evoke for a free spirit battered into submission that is this tough little film’s greatest achievement.

Overall, it’s as cheesy and just as hard to resist as a Mamma Mia! with smoother production values and a LGBTQ+ heart. The fact that Meryl Streep connects the two is a delight: at 71, this is an actress who still knows how to have a good time in her craft, and the viewer can feel the joy in it.

Despite the constant effort and genuine warmth of star Melissa McCarthy, the film’s stitched-together stories come apart early on.

You don’t have to be an animal lover to appreciate the craft and the genuine poetic vision of a film which, though strictly unsentimental, is intensely moving, transfixing and quite genuinely unique.

As Avis softly underlines, not everything has changed for man’s servants. And although we know the beats of this story, it’s a classic for a reason: Disney+’s Black Beauty gives a great yarn a good exercise.

The comedic sparks and emotional stirrings simply aren’t as potent this time around, despite some colourful animation and an occasionally inspired silly streak.

An abundance of monologues gives a clear indication as to the stage origins of this Jazz Age-story, but they also add to the fire-and-brimstone feeling accentuated by director George C. Wolfe’s darkly enticing adaptation.

Stewart and Davis have such adorable chemistry as the central couple — playful and flirty one moment, touchingly sincere the next — that it’s a shame DuVall has stranded them in such an unsatisfying story. Granted, Happiest Season is meant to be cheesy in the comforting way that cable-television Christmas films often are, but all too frequently the actresses seem smarter than the material, forced to navigate preposterous twists and increasingly silly plot complications.

Because the characters are so thinly drawn and the drama so unconvincingly developed, the third-act operatics don’t dazzle the way they should, leaving Run very much stuck in place.

More of branding exercise than a fully fledged star vehicle, this fast moving but instantly forgettable adventure allows Chan to participate in the set pieces while ceding the really strenuous activity to his up-and-coming co-stars.

Gandhi speaks to collaborators, lovers and journalists, who help flesh out Hernandez’s life and career trajectory, although the musician’s unwillingness to participate leaves this an intriguing snapshot rather than a definitive portrait.

An intimate film tackling an expansive subject — the treatment of refugees around the globe, and the way the world processes the traumas that lead to such urgent, widespread immigration — this is a poignant and morally complex drama.

Subdued in tone and stoic in its approach to the dangers that can decimate an entire community, Identifying Features is admirable in its restraint, and all the more powerful because of it.

The journey is definitely worth making, as both people and places lead Kit slowly towards some sort of rapprochement with his identity.

Knight’s intuitive portrayal – her vulnerability, rage and raw sexiness – shows and tells exactly what it’s like. It’s a moving and emotional debut which knocks out any loaded sense of familiarity regarding the film’s no-hope setting.

The main audience takeaway here will be the two main performances by Adams and Close.

Fatman has its wicked charms, but ultimately this cheeky action-comedy is a lot of buildup without sufficient payoff.

The dialogue in Mank is fabulously fast, hard and quippy throughout, a real tribute to the man himself. If sometimes all that detail obscures the bigger picture, Mank is still a treat; for those looking for more, we always have Citizen Kane to fall back on, after all.

Once the recipient of the country’s top portraiture prize for his likeness of David Wenham, the provocative painter Adam Cullen is now the recipient of a blistering, no-holds-barred cinematic portrait that, like his artwork, relentlessly flouts convention, inspires questions and courts a strong, complicated reaction.

In its narrative tautness, this documentary can hold its own alongside the best of Romania’s contemporary fiction.

Bezhucha seems to have spent all his effort and imagination on the journey: the destination an afterthought, the denouement bizarrely prolonged, and all but written in a flashing neon sign above the Blackledges’ heads.

A drama that simmers away on repression but never comes to a fully satisfying boil.

Ponti fills this adaptation of the Romain Gary novel with an abundance of empathy, illustrating how all of us are nursing invisible psychic wounds, but the execution is so gauzy it never quite connects.

The film offers an engrossing overview of the painstaking, insightful investigations carried out over the years by Lewis and associates.

The restrained, austere filmmaking of the latest picture from Wayne Wang belies the emotional depth of this sober picture.

All of this is familiar but still surprisingly effective, and it’s highlighted by Baron Cohen’s onscreen partner Maria Bakalova, who ends up providing some of this mockumentary’s finest moments.

The director doesn’t draw well-rounded performances from Bruno or Eastick, failing to capture the awe or confusion of youth. What we get instead are adrenalised chase scenes and needlessly showy special effects that lack charm.

It’s an impressive debut feature from writer/director Byrne who spills blood, boils brains and cannibalises naked teens with wicked energy.

I’m Your Woman benefits greatly from its off-kilter rhythms and intuitive digressions, even if it can be tonally uneven and a little obvious thematically at times.

Given the recent debates about British identity and the spike in race hatred and racially motivated crime – all as a result of Brexit – the timing of White Riot couldn’t be more apt.

Evan Morgan’s sometimes weird, sometimes whimsical thriller delivers a grown-up blend of film-noir tropes and deadpan humor, for a comedy-drama which starts off lighthearted and then deftly darkens.

Visually glorious, frequently very funny and genuinely profound, this is a picture which cries out to be seen on the big screen.

Impressively for a piece of foundation-stage universe building, Jiang Ziya manages to hint at a world beyond the frame without mitigating its individual pleasures.

Despite a potentially daring twist at the mid-mark, though, the film lacks sufficient chills, or a satisfactory payoff.

Audiences familiar with this kind of story — and the inevitable complications that ensue once characters try to hide a brutal crime — will be ahead of the overheated storytelling.

Perhaps the most impressive element is the way that the picture so deftly juggles its tonal shifts. Rocks is as mercurial and complex as any moody teenager can be, veering from hilarity to misery and back again in seconds.

Education is everything, and Mangrove, conventional though it may be, is still a radical step on the way to societal self-examination.

Well written, -acted, -cast and -produced, this wholly entertaining yet stingingly relevant story of the 1970 Miss World finals should have been a smash hit when it opened in UK theatres on March 13, but events overtook its release.

This courtroom drama has its florid excesses, but a fine cast (combined with Sorkin’s indefatigable enthusiasm for electric, shamelessly proselytising entertainment) sell the commentary at this still-relevant story’s centre.

It’s a familiar watch and a pallid reminder of better days we’ve had with the director.

Spun mostly of sugar and air, this film is a lightweight, but mostly sweet, treat – and a lovely reminder of when pictures could just be low-key amusements, and the pandemic hadn’t yet turned cities into ghost towns.

Not so much bleeding edge as screeching edge, Gia Coppola’s Mainstream is a frenetic piece of pop-art social satire that strives to be super-current but feels oddly traditional beneath its eye-searing, pixel-popping surface.

A sufficiently motivated woman is a fearsome and unstoppable force: the central premise for this gleefully pulpy WWII horror puts a dash of feminist fury into a schlocky B movie set-up.

Because Good Joe Bell spends so much time wondering how this father will change and grow, it doesn’t concentrate enough on his son, who is actually experiencing the bullying.

Wiseman’s true subject here is arguably off-screen, shamed by example, guilty in absentia: the erosion of democratic values and civil, civic debate in an increasingly divided country.

What comes across strongest is the sheer uncertainty gripping both the caregivers and the infected — no one has experienced anything like this, and no one knows what could happen next.

Theatrical, both in its single-location setting and its tone, the film manages to be simultaneously laboured but also oddly opaque.

A lovely, satisfying saga, Wolfwalkers has the feel of an instant classic.

It’s a musical and a piece of time and a feeling that’s a privilege to share.

Finding its genial, quirky groove early, John Sheedy’s family film flirts with tweeness but ultimately bubbles with the same spark as its can-do protagonist.

This is storytelling which is as enigmatic as it is compelling. Not surprisingly, the use of music throughout is superb.

An unapologetic old-school exploiter going full on for thrills and suspense, it’s undeniably polished and energetic, and features a couple of strong performances from young stars Isabel May and Eli Brown – but it feels fundamentally tasteless, indeed just plain wrong.

Once that narrative path becomes clear, Penguin Bloom never really surprises, delivering a series of heartfelt but predictable story beats.

Access is all in Rosi’s documentaries, and the access he achieves, winning the confidence of his subjects so that it’s as if he isn’t there while filming their most intimate moments, is astonishing. But access has its limits. While our hearts open up to these traumatised kids, being there with them in the room at this delicate moment doesn’t feel quite right.

This is an atmospherically shot film about African oral culture, about riots, street musicians and storytellers. But it also uses the space and denizens of the prison as a metaphor for the divisions and tensions within Ivorian society.

The audience brings to this film a set of expectations born from a lifetime of watching romantic fiction. That Monday skewers them so pointedly and thoroughly is what makes it such an entertainingly subversive spin on the genre.

The film isn’t particularly electric in its presentation, but it serves as a sombre reminder of how much white supremacy is woven into the country’s fabric — and also how relevant King’s causes remain today.

Mandibles is far from derivative, and Dupieux goes beyond the usual “Love you bro!” buddy-film clichés to draw something genuine, even heartwarming, out of the friendship between these two idiots.

Personal and committed as the film clearly is, it won’t come across as a revelation for adepts of this pensive brand of slow-burning visual poetry - of which this seems a reticent and somewhat old-fashioned example.

The escalating cat-and-mouse game between Pike’s schemer and Peter Dinklage’s Russian mobster has its pulpy pleasures, but the script’s arch cleverness and heavy-handed message about the corruption of the American dream make it hard to care as much as we should about who ends up on top.

While this is essentially a fireside chat atmospherically shot, Hopper/Welles is recommended viewing for anyone remotely interested in either personality, or in the history of American cinema.

What is so compelling is the picture I Am Greta pieces together of Thunberg herself.

Final Account is shocking footage which hasn’t quite made the leap into being a forensic film.

This is a documentary that carefully, meticulously builds a case and then blindsides the viewer with revelations, second thoughts and fresh evidence that makes you reconsider everything you thought was certain.

Another Round (Druk) is a funny film which is also desperately sad, a superficially amusing indictment of drinking culture which is much more bitter than sweet.

Michell’s film is as defiantly traditional as the wallpaper which decorates the Bunton’s house.

A heartfelt but ultimately hobbled coming-of-age drama.

It is the film’s ever pertinent call for objectivity and humanity in the daily news cycle which makes it stirringly relevant.

A meditation on memory, identity, grief and loss, with the narrative device of a global pandemic thrown in for good measure: Apples might initially sound like a tough sell. But this hugely accomplished, satisfyingly textured first feature is really something special.

A political thriller charged with anger and sexual tension, this is as timely as it is bracingly entertaining.

Scripted with heightened literary cadences by Ron Hansen and Jim Shepard, the film is well crafted in every respect, and marks an acting career high for Katherine Waterston, as well as a fine showcase for the ever more impressive Vanessa Kirby.

A film of sober elegance and control, Wife Of A Spy never quite delivers on the tautness of its build-up, but it is beautifully executed and features a number of teasingly ambivalent performances, notably from lead Yu Aoi.

Its old-school charm shades into tired plotting more than once, and the moral lesson concealed in the film’s central story about a gang of tykes’ search for buried treasure can feel a little preachy.

Despite this riveting premise, Padrenostro goes the way of 1970s cuisine in being over-cooked to the level of boil-in-a-bag.

New Order may split audiences who require a more conventional approach, but this is dynamic cinema which takes no prisoners outside the hostages on screen: loud and violent, it lures the viewer into a place where there can be no bystanders. In that way, it’s quite magnificent – an outlet for those boiling in our times.

What’s most interesting, although it gets slightly buried under a few too many almost identical musical performances, is the film’s account of the fractious symbiosis of the guru-disciple relationship.

The film’s magnetic centre is a strong performance from Vysotskaya, working from a base line of initial testiness to rising anxiety and terror in face of the oppression that she realises she has been enabling.

As fragmented as its title suggests, Pieces of a Woman contains parts of a good film, possibly a great one.

King’s debut makes attempts to widen out the stage play, but there’s no denying the fact that this is an exchange of ideas as opposed to a narrative, or that dialogue is often pitched as monologue. What ideas, though, and what a night.

It’s extraordinary how a work like Nomadland can hold a mirror to society and refract back to the audience the light of their own lives.